This invention relates in general to wire drawing apparatus and deals more particularly with an improved wire drawing apparatus of dry lubricated type wherein drawn wire is cooled by direct contact with a cooling liquid.
In a conventional apparatus for drawing steel wire, for example, the wire passes through a lubricant compartment where it picks up dry lubricant, such as soap, before being drawn through a tungsten carbide die to reduce its cross sectional area. Heat is generated during the drawing operation by friction in the die and deformation of the material. It is generally desirable to cool the drawn wire before further drawing, because the heat of the wire generally determines the maximum speed at which the wire can be drawn. Further, if the wire is allowed to remain at elevated temperature for a relatively short time the physical characteristics of the wire may be altered.
In a dry lubricant wire drawing system it is important that the wire be dry before it enters the lubricating compartment, because water on the wire will destroy lubricating qualities of the lubricant causing rapid wear at the die. Typical wire drawing apparatus wherein wire is lubricated by a solid or dry lubricant and cooled by direct contact with a coolant liquid is illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,203,751 to Simons for Method and Apparatus for Drawing Wire, issued June 11, 1940, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,973,426 to Fujita et al for Method of Cooling Steel Wire, issued Aug. 10, 1976. In drawing wire with apparatus of the aforedescribed general type wire run-out or breakage is likely to result in escape of coolant liquid from the coolant chamber into the dry lubricant container causing contamination of the lubricant and machine downtime. The present invention is primarily concerned with this problem.